Ever since I was a kid, I’ve remembered the scary story about the Headless Horseman. But tonight I discovered something that I never knew before. I’d been reading the free Kindle edition of Washington Irving’s The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, a collection of essays and stories that he’d published together in 1820.

And its very last story is the original Legend of Sleepy Hollow…

Washington Irving also published “Rip Van Winkle” in that same collection (attributing both stories to a fake Dutch historian that he’d been using as an alter ego — Diedrich Knickerbocker). But if you read Irving’s book all the way to the end, there’s an even bigger surprise. On its final page, Washington Irving reveals that “an old farmer who had been down to New York” brings word that Ichabod Crane is still alive!

Though the townsfolk of Sleepy Hollow believed he’d been taken by the Headless Horseman, the truth is that the gangly schoolmaster “had left the neighborhood, partly through fear of the goblin…and partly in mortification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress…” When the townspeople found a pumpkin shell by the Sleepy Hollow bridge, next to Ichabod’s hat, they’d just assumed this meant a goblin had carried him away. But in fact — according to that farmer — Ichabod “changed his quarters to a distant part of the country; had kept school and studied law at the same time, had been admitted to the bar, turned politician, electioneered, written for the newspapers, and finally had been made a justice…”

It’s nice that there’s a happy ending after all. In fact, Irving’s whole book is a celebration of travel, the joys of discovering new local customs, and especially the magic of rural life. There’s stories about neighborhood characters and Christmas celebrations, grand old manors and peaceful villages. Many of the “sketches” are about England, and there’s even another ghost story set in Europe — The Spectre Bridegroom — which also turns out to have another witty explanation for its supernatural proceedings, and a surprisingly cheerful ending. And of course, the same could also be said for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

I once wrote an essay about the original story, noting that it’s really a story about the legend itself. In a way, it’s Washington Irving’s own tribute to rural America, with its close-knit communities and local superstitions. The bounties of its farmland might be coveted by an outside schoolmaster, but in the end he couldn’t successfully navigate himself into their society. But Ichabod was too lovable of a character to leave lost in a goblin limbo — without a few sentences about where he really ended up — safe and sound, far away, where he really belonged.

And I was particularly moved to hear this, because Walt Disney’s version of this story scared the heck out of me as a kid. It doesn’t really clarify for younger audiences that the headless horseman was just one of the locals who’d dressed up in a costume. (Brom Bones had been jealous of the schoolmaster’s advances on a local heiress, Irving makes clear in his original story.) The heiress, it’s implied, had been leading on Ichabod, to drive Brom into a jealous frenzy. So Brom dresses up like the headless horseman that night — carrying a pumpkin under his arm, which he harmlessly throws at the schoolmaster at the end of his ride.

In Washington Irving’s story, Ichabod then just tumbles to the ground, and hears all the hoofbeats galloping by. But in the Disney version, it’s a flaming pumpkin that’s thrown at his head. And all throughout their animated chase, that vicious horseman had kept swinging a sword at poor Ichabod. No wonder that cartoon is so frightening to children!

Plus, Walt Disney even changed the story so it all happens on Halloween night!

But Washington Irving made sure his readers knew what really happened that autumn in Sleepy Hollow. After the superstitious Ichabod vanished, Brom married that heiress himself. And from then on, every time someone described the mysterious disappearance of Ichabod Crane, Brom Bones would “look exceedingly knowing…and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin…

“[W]hich led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.”

Over the holidays I always like to think about people who’ve been with us over the years — and I remember watching David Letterman all the way back in the 1980s! But 2015 was the year he finally retired from his long-running late-night talk show. So I wanted to take a moment to remember a time when he actually talked to his audience about the Kindle. Just five years ago on his late-night talk show he’d shown off the tablet that he’d he’d just started using!

It’s a good reminder about how fast things have changed — and how sometimes the biggest challenge is simply our own stubborn human nature! Talking to the leader of his band (Paul Shaffer), Letterman at first actually seemed genuinely confused even about whether he’d bought an iPad or a Kindle!

LETTERMAN: For Christmas, I loaded up — I had one of them iPads, and they put a book in it. You know you can do that now?

PAUL SHAFFER: Oh, yeah. Sure…

LETTERMAN: And so I’ve been reading this book in this iPad thing, and I’m reading and I’m reading and I’m reading. And as you know, you don’t turn a page, in — when you’re reading on the — what do they call them, the Kindles or something?

PAUL SHAFFER: Yeah… They’ve got that, too, yeah. (Audience laughs)

Letterman was probably reading with a “Kindle for iPad” app. (Earlier that week, Amazon had pointed out that it’s one of the top 10 best-selling apps among iPad owners.) But as their conversation went on, Paul Shaffer gently tried to correct Letterman’s confusion as he explained how you turn pages.

LETTERMAN:And so you just — you just kind of do this with your finger.

PAUL SHAFFER: You flip that. Yeah.

LETTERMAN: And the thing’ll…

PAUL SHAFFER: On the iPad and the Kindle…

Letterman was playing up his reactions as a technology curmudgeon — but he was building up to a complaint that I’d heard before. The Kindle used to tell you only what percentage of a book you’d finished reading, without telling you how many real-world pages were left in the book. Now, of course, the Kindle can actually report how much time is left before you reach the end of book — or even the end of your current chapter. But back in 2010, this was irritating the late-night talk show host. Although the punch line turned out to be that his bandleader Paul Shaffer had the perfect answer!

PAUL SHAFFER: Right. No, well, there can’t be. There can’t be, because you can change the font, and if you have a larger font, then you’re going to have fewer pages and therefore you can’t possibly commit to a page number because as you electronically alter the page you number, you are going to have to change as well the number of pages that you have at your disposal…(Audience applauds)

LETTERMAN: Thank you. Thank you, Steve Jobs.

It’s nice to remember that story, as a reminder of how things have changed. (Amazon eventually even found a way to add page numbers to lots of Kindle ebooks, so maybe Letterman is happier now.) But I still always smile when I remember how skeptical he’d been about the iPad — even in earlier shows. When the device was first released, he’d showed one to his audience, then joked “The radiation this thing gives off is incredible. You’re supposed to wear a lead apron when you operate it!”

But it was especially interesting in light of a research study by J.P. Morgan. Back in early 2011, they’d determined that 40% of the people who own an iPad also own a Kindle — and that another 23% of them planned to buy one within the next 12 months!

I’ve always seen that as a hopeful sign that all iPad owners aren’t as confused as David Letterman! But I still would like to drop his comments into a time capsule, to be opened up by later generations. Even if books are all someday replaced by digital readers, it’ll be worth remembering just how uncomfortable some people were with the change.

LETTERMAN: But see, and then you just — you just whisk it away like that, and then — but look. What do you see? Do you see a page number?

PAUL SHAFFER: No….

LETTERMAN: No. You don’t see no page number.

PAUL SHAFFER: No. There isn’t…

LETTERMAN: How do you know when you’re done, is what I want to know? Or if somebody – somebody asks you, are you reading the — the book? And I say yeah. “What page are you on?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what page I’m on.” For example, this — I’m reading now the Alex Trebeck story, and I have no idea — uh…No, I can’t help you. Sorry!”

Every year on New Year’s Day, I assemble a “master list” of shortcuts to over 100 of the most useful pages for Kindle owners, like all of the free ebooks, games, and comic books that Amazon’s now making available. But this year there’s 10 new links that highlight some fun new content that in 2015 became a part of our Kindle universe!

Instead of trying to memorize a bunch of complicated URLs, I’ve created shorter, easier-to-remember addresses that still lead to the same pages.

And all 110 of them start with TinyURL.com …

FREE EBOOKS AND GAMES

tinyurl.com/100freekindlebooks
Amazon’s 100 best-selling free ebooks are always available on this list (which is updated hourly!) And of course, the other side of the page also shows the 100 best-selling ebooks which are not free…

tinyurl.com/FreeKindleGames
There’s also free games for your black-and-white Kindle readers — 19 of them — most created by Amazon to show off the Kindle’s versatility.

tinyurl.com/FreePacmanApp
Yes, there’s a free version of Pac-man for Android tablets and phones. It was added into Amazon’s app store in May as a way to celebrate Pac-Man’s 35th anniversary!

tinyurl.com/AmazonEntrepreneursTransformations is a free 200-page ebook published in 2014 by Amazon about “authors, innovators, and small businesses” around the world who are all enjoying new success using Amazon.

FREE COMIC BOOKS

tinyurl.com/KindleFCBD
There’s 45 free comic books in the Kindle Store from “Free Comic Book Day”, a real-world event which happens every year on the first Saturday in May. (Mark your calendars!) There’s The Avengers, Rocket Raccoon and The Guardians of the Galaxy, and even Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge

tinyurl.com/AmazonTours
In 2014, Amazon finally started offering free tours of their own fulfillment centers in six different states!

FREE MUSIC

tinyurl.com/FreeMp3List
I love how Amazon is always giving away free mp3s — and you can always find a complete list at this URL!

tinyurl.com/AmazonPrimeMusic
Last year Amazon started making thousands of songs available for free to subscribers of their Amazon Prime service.

FREE VIDEO

tinyurl.com/PrimeInstantVideo
If you’ve signed up for Amazon’s free “Prime” two-day shipping service, they’ll also let you watch a ton of movies and TV shows for free on your Kindle Fire! (Or over the internet…) Browse through the complete selection here – everything from the original episodes of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone to modern favorites like Bones and even new shows created by Amazon!

tinyurl.com/GoodmanShow
John Goodman’s show “Alpha House” — written by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau — is exclusively available on Amazon Instant Video. Watch the first episode free online!

tinyurl.com/2015Pilots
Amazon’s competing with Netflix by offering their own original programming! (Previous pilot’s included Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and their Emmy award-winning Transparent

tinyurl.com/KindleFlareThe Onion finally unleashed their fake news stories on the Kindle, joking that Amazon had released a Kindle with a very annoying new feature. (And you can also have The Onion delivered directly to your Kindle at tinyurl.com/KindleOnion

tinyurl.com/BezosMarketplace
A fascinating interview with the author of the controversial book about Amazon, “The Everything Store,” which includes a discussion (with audio) about the sound of Jeff Bezos’s laughter.

tinyurl.com/JeffBezosRemembers
Just 7 years after the launch of Amazon, Jeff Bezos shared its story with a roomful of young entrepreneurs, reminiscing about his site’s early days — and the library where he’d read books as a teenager.

BARGAIN EBOOKS

tinyurl.com/399KindleEbooks
Every month, Amazon picks 100 ebooks to offer at a discount of $3.99 or less. There’s always a new selection on the first day of the month, so if you visited the page on the last day of the month, you’d see 100 discounted books — and then the next day you’d see an entirely new selection!

And if you’re in France, there’s also a different URL for your (English-language) bargain ebooks — it’s at tinyurl.com/399booksFrance

tinyurl.com/DailyKindleDeal
In addition, Amazon’s also created a special “Daily Deal” page, where they pick a new ebook each day to sell at a big discount for 24 hours. Past deals have included a James Bond novel by Ian Fleming and Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night — and I’m always surprised by the variety.

tinyurl.com/KindleSerials
There’s a new format for Kindle ebooks called the “Kindle Serial.” Famous authors will now deliver new additional installments of their ebooks just as soon as they’ve finished writing them! The link above takes you to Amazon’s “Kindle Serials” store.

tinyURL.com/XKCDAuthor
XKCD cartoonist Randall Munroe became a best-selling author in 2014, thanks to “What If,” his mind-blowing collection of serious answers to “absurd hypothetical questions.” And in 2015, he published yet-another book with mind-blowing illustrations called Thing Explainer

tinyurl.com/BackOnMurder
My favorite Kindle mystery — a 384-page detective novel following a police detective’s homicide investigation in Houston called Back on Murder.

tinyurl.com/JamesBondEbooks
Every James Bond novel by Ian Fleming has been released as a Kindle ebook — officially licensed by Amazon publishing.

tinyurl.com/Dataclysm
One of the founders of the dating site “OK Cupid” released the stunning book “Dataclysm” towards the end of 2014, revealing the surprising insights achievable with massives amounts of data.

tinyurl.com/DilbertEbooks
My favorite newspaper comic strip is Dilbert, about the life of an office cubicle worker. In 2012, creator Scott Adams finally collected all the comic strips together into a series of ebooks that you can buy for your Kindle!

tinyurl.com/DoonesburyEbook
Doonesbury, the long-running newspaper comic strip by Garry Trudeau, is now finally available on the Kindle — in four massive ten-year retrospective collections!

tinyurl.com/PlayboyEbooks
Playboy announced for their 50th anniversary that they’d release 50 of their best interviews as 99-cent Kindle ebooks. They’re now available in the Kindle Store, including fascinating and sometimes even historic interviews with famous figures from the last 50 years, including Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, Bill Gates, Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen Hawking, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jon Stewart.

TinyURL.com/TakeiBook
George Takei is the 75-year-old TV actor who’d played Mr. Sulu on Star Trek. But now he’s also a huge internet phenomenon — and he’s finally released his first Kindle ebooks (including Oh myy! (There Goes the Internet)…!)

tinyurl.com/HarryPotterKindle
One of the biggest events in publishing was the release of all J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels as Kindle ebooks.

Two Maurice Sendak URLsWhere the Wild Things Are was written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, a beloved children’s book author who died in 2012 at the age of 83. Though his books were never released in Kindle Format, you can still download the full-length novel adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are that was written by Dave Eggers at tinyurl.com/SendakNovel. And you can even buy a DVD at Amazon of the rare 1970s adaptation of Sendak’s stories into television cartoons with narration by Peter Schickele — at tinyurl.com/SendakCartoons

tinyurl.com/BestBooksOf2012
A fun list where Amazon’s editors also choose their selections for the “Best Books of 2012”. It’s a special web page with their picks in 30 different categories, including the best print books, the best Kindle ebooks, and the best biographies, mysteries, and even cookbooks!

tinyurl.com/kindle-cs
Amazon’s Customer Service has drawn rave reviews. (If your Kindle is broken, Amazon will usually mail you a replacement overnight!) This page collects all of Amazon’s support URLs. And at its far left, there’s a special link labelled “Contact Kindle Support,” which leads to the support phone numbers for 10 different countries, and there’s also an online contact form and the ability to start a live text chat!

tinyurl.com/ReturnAnEbook
Amazon lets you return any ebook within 7 days, no questions asked. Just remember this address — tinyURL.com/ReturnAnEbook — and you’ll always be able to get a refund if you’re not satisfied with your purchase. (And you can also use this URL for returning Kindles!)

MY EBOOKS AND GAMES

It’s my list, so of course it includes shortcuts for a couple very special projects…

tinyurl.com/500Quotes
My very first Android app — “500 Inspiring Quotes” — is available free in Amazon’s Android store, and also in the Nook and Google Play Store.

TinyURL.com/ThrowInTheVowel
An original word game for Kindle became one of the top 100 most-popular games for the year — and I’m it’s co-author! Check out all the fun at TinyURL.com/ThrowInTheVowel, and discover why 45 people gave it a five-star review! And we’ve just released a brand-new sequel which you can see at TinyURL.com/ThrowInTheVowel2

I wrote a special “mystery poem” that was finally published in November as a funny, illustrated ebook. There’s cartoon-y pictures which show four turkeys in a farmer’s pen on Thanksgiving Day. The farmer’s approaching with an axe — but one of the turkeys has a plan to escape! (“Can the farmer figure out which one? And can you?”) The short “Turkey Mystery Rhyme” is only 99 cents — a real bargain for a fun, holiday smile.

tinyurl.com/OurFunnyDog
Lucca is a cuddly Cocker Spaniel dog who was rescued from an animal shelter, and he now adores his new family — my girlfriend and me! My girlfriend’s been telling her friends how she received “the best present ever” — this short collection of funny photos of her dog, along with sweetly humorous captions that tell the story of his life. (Like the day he met that white cat that moved in downstairs…) If you want to preview a “sample chapter first, go to tinyurl.com/GoodReadsDog — but the whole “short picture scrapbook” is only 99 cents, and it offers a nice peek at a very wonderful dog…

GAMES

tinyurl.com/FreeAmazonApps.
Amazon’s Android app store offers a free app every day — both for your Kindle Fire tablet and for any Android smartphone.

tinyurl.com/allkindlegames
Amazon has a web page devoted just to all the games you can play on your Kindle. (There’s over 400 of them!) It’s fun to see all the colorful game “covers” collected together into one magical toy store-like page.

FREE AND DISCOUNTED KINDLE MAGAZINES

tinyurl.com/FreeSciFiMagFantasy & Science Fiction is the famous magazine where Stephen King first published the stories that later formed the basis for The Dark Tower. It’s now available as a free Kindle magazine. It’s been publishing short SciFi stories and commentary for over 60 years — including the works of many other famous authors. In 1978 they published Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” short stories, and in 1959 they ran Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” as a serial. (They also published the novella “Flowers for Algernon” and short stories by Harlan Ellison, and even published a short story by Kurt Vonnegut in 1961, which later appeared in his collection “Welcome to the Monkey House.”) Amazon’s now offering free Kindle subscriptions to a special “digest edition”. (The print edition, published six times a year, is a massive 256 pages.) The digest includes all the editorial content – editor’s recommendations, the “odd books” section, film and book reviews, plus cartoons and ‘Coming Attractions’ (highlights of each issue) – along with one short story. (And if you want the full 256-page version sent to your Kindle, you can subscribe for just 99 cents more.)

tinyurl.com/MeAndMyKindle
It’s my blog! (That’s the URL for its page on the Kindle Store.) If you want to tell your friends how to find me, this URL makes it easy to remember. Just practice saying “TinyURL . com/MeAndMyKindle” and soon we’ll all be sharing the latest Kindle news together.

tinyurl.com/KindleFireSong
There was a spectacular new TV ad when Amazon announced their new Kindle Fire tablets. It showed the evolution of print from a quill pen dipped in ink to Amazon’s latest full-color multimedia touchscreen tablet. But I loved the song they played in the background, by a new Louisiana-based band called the Givers. (“The words we say today, we’ll say… we’ll see them again. Yes, we’ll see them again…”) I’d called it an ode to all the self-published authors who are finding new audiences on the Kindle — and at this URL, you can hear the entire song on YouTube!

tinyurl.com/AmyRutberg
Before she became “the woman from that Kindle commercial,” actress Amy Rutberg appeared in a zany stage production called “The Divine Sister.” Playbill (the official magazine for theatre-goers) had her record a backstage peek at the theatre and its cast for a special online feature — and it’s a fun way to catch a peek at another part of her career. That URL leads to the video’s web page on YouTube, and there’s also a second part which is available at http://tinyurl.com/AmyRutberg2

MISCELLANEOUS

tinyurl.com/kindlemap
Ever wonder where all the Kindle owners are? Someone’s created an interactive online map, where Kindle owners can stop by and leave “push pins” showing their location! There’s big clusters on the east and west coast of America (though you could still leave the first push pin for Arizona or Nevada!) It’s an adapted version of one of Google’s maps of the world, so you can also spot “Kindlers” in Iraq, Romania, and Ethiopia. And if you click on the push pins, you’ll find the Kindler’s name and sometimes a comment. (One Kindler in Spain simply posted: “Tengo un Kindle DX!”)

tinyurl.com/GoldBoxPage
Every day Amazon also offers discounts on a new item — sometimes even expensive electronics equipment. And you can always find them all at tinyurl.com/GoldBoxPage

Here’s four of my all-time favorite free holiday stories. (Maybe reading on the Kindle can become a new Christmas tradition!) These stories are all available as a free ebooks, on the Kindle (or on Project Gutenberg). And at least one of them has been around for almost 200 years!

He was America’s first internationally popular author, and he wrote two timeless stories — Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But he also fathered many of our Christmas traditions. At the age of 29, when he was starting his career in 1812, Irving added five nostalgic Christmas stories to a collection of writing, and for one dream sequence, imagined what would happen if St. Nicholas flew over the forests in a flying sleigh. That’s believed to have inspired many of the subsequent stories about Santa Claus and his flying reindeer!

And the stories had an even greater impact. Irving also researched holiday traditions as far back as 1652, according to Wikipedia, and his popular stories “contributed to the revival and reinterpretation of the Christmas holiday in the United States.” Even Charles Dickens himself said that Irving’s stories influenced his own famous novella, A Christmas Carol.

It’s not just a story about Christmas. It’s partly responsible for the way that way celebrate it. The story by 31-year-old Charles Dickens “was one of the single greatest influences in rejuvenating the old Christmas traditions of England,” according to Wikipedia, which notes it was published just as new customs were established like tree-decorating and Christmas cards. The book helped to popularize these traditions, though ironically, the story was immediately pirated after Dickens published it, and he realized almost no profits from the story himself!

Here’s something fun to download: the original text of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” (One historian called it “arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American,” according to Wikipedia.) And there’s some interesting trivia about this story. In its first printing in 1823, Santa’s reindeer were named “Dunder” and “Blixem,” which are the Dutch words for “thunder” and “lightning” — but over the years their names changed into the more familiar-sounding “Donner” and “Blitzen”!

There’s one short Christmas story that I absolutely love — by one of my favorite authors. Ernest Hemingway called Nelson Algren “one of the two best authors in America” — and his greatest novel, The Man With the Golden Arm, offered an unforgettable look at Chicago and its lowlifes. (In 1950, it won a National Book Award). But my personal favorite Algren book was always The Last Carousel, another dazzling collection of short works from throughout his career, which he’d published in 1973.

At the age of 64, the author had hand-picked each story himself – though unfortunately The Last Carousel isn’t available on the Kindle. But one lucky December, I discovered that you can still read one of its most touching stories online. On December 4, 1949, the Chicago Sunday Tribune published “Merry Christmas, Mr. Mark,” a story Algren wrote at the height of career, at the same time as his award-winning novel. The 40-year-old novelist remembered being a young newsboy in the 1920s, braving the snows to sell The Saturday Evening Blade at an intersection by the cemetery — and how the newsboys had tried to swindle their customers!

But by the end, they’d all learned a valuable lesson about Christmas…!

Here’s a special free holiday treat from Amazon. If you own a black-and-white Kindle, Amazon’s already released 18 different free games. And for Christmas a couple years ago, they also released one that was specifically designed for the holiday season…

“We were going to wait to start talking about the holidays, but this new free game for Kindle is getting us in the spirit a little early,” read one announcement on the Kindle’s page on Facebook!

“Check it out for yourself, but don’t blame us if you suddenly get the urge to start stringing lights and singing carols!” That new game was “Picture Perfect Holiday Puzzles,” and within four hours of the announcement, it had already earned 208 “Like” votes on Facebook and drawn 35 enthusiastic comments. (Like the woman in Minnesota who posted “OMG! OMG! OMG! This is my all time FAVORITE Kindle game, I’ve been waiting for a Part 2 forever!! YESSSS!!!!!!!”)

It was a “sequel” to a free game Amazon released called simply “Picture Perfect Puzzles”. In both those games, users try to form a picture by darkening all the correct squares in a grid, making logical deductions from clues showing the number of squares that need darkening in each row and column. But for the second “holiday” version, Amazon created 35 more puzzles, each one with a fun holiday theme. (The puzzles were grouped into six categories: Winter Begins, Hanukkah, Christmas, Winter Continues, Kwanzaa, and New Years.)

I’ve played this game, and it’s a lot of fun. It can be “challenging” — you have to do some logical thinking in your brain. But that just makes it totally engrossing, like a good game of Sudoku.

A funny thing happened when I bought Mystery Science Theatre 3000: Santa Claus. Amazon gave me a dollar! “Purchase or Rent a Movie or TV Show from Amazon Instant Video, Get a $1 Digital Music Credit,” reads the special web page at Amazon.com. And the second I’d bought my video, Amazon sent me an e-mail confirming that I’d qualified. “Your recent order [of Mystery Science Theatre 3000: Santa Claus ] entitles you to a promotional credit which we have added to your account… As a customer who has purchased or rented a qualifying product from Amazon Instant Video, you have earned a $1 credit valid towards Amazon Digital Music albums or single songs.”

The funny thing was, the video only cost me $3.00 to rent — and some videos are even cheaper. (You can buy videos for as little as 99 cents.) Amazon wants to publicize their “Instant Video” store — and giving away free music is guaranteed to bring some attention. They’re going to keep doing this until the end of 2015, so the next time you purchase a video, you’ll probably also receive the same Amazon e-mail.

Of course, they may end this offer, according to the fine print in the give-away’s “Terms and Conditions.” (“Amazon reserves the right to modify or cancel the offer at any time…”) But for now, the $1 credit is automatically applied to your very next music purchase. And if you’re not sure whether you’ve qualified, there’s a special button labeled “Check Your Balance” where you can see when Amazon’s credit is available.

I like how the credit just instantly appears in your Amazon account just as soon as you complete a qualifying video purchase. (Amazon’s e-mail literally arrived within seconds of my video purchase. That’s how much they want you to try their music store…) “Thanks again for shopping with us,” Amazon added cheerfully at the end of the e-mail.

And by the end of the day, I was enjoying both a new song and a new video.

I’m trying to get into holiday spirit – and I was really touched by a story about a stroke victim who was re-learning how to read using a Kindle…

61-year-old Tom Calteux was a former photo editor at a Milwaukee newspaper, but at the age of 49 — 12 years ago — the stroke took his ability to read. He’s spent over a decade in therapy, and “When he had trouble, you could see tears develop,” remember one of the pathologists. She reports that now using the Kindle has been “uplifting” — both emotionally and psychologically — and an Amazon representative confirms that there are “a number of stories about stroke patients across the country using Kindles to help with their reading.

I guess I felt like I should take a moment this year to be thankful — and to think about all those people, somewhere around us, who are very thankful for their Kindles.

* Thanksgiving always holds a special meaning for the families of soldiers who are stationed overseas. And some of those soldiers are now reading on their Kindles, according to stories being shared on the Kindle online discussion forums. Author Edward C. Patterson organized “Operation eBook Drop” in 2009, in which authors agreed to provide free ebook coupons to “any deployed Coalition Armed Forces member with a Kindle.”

In a little more than a year, they’ve now distributed over 440,000 coupons to the soldiers for at least 2,000 different ebooks which were contributed by over 522 authors. And earlier this month, they received a thank-you e-mail from a medical sergeant named Dakotah Hayes. “This means so very much to myself and my entire team… This is our job and we do it because we enjoy helping others at home and over seas, so to receive even a word of thanks is more than we could ever want. Thank you for your support and your generous gifts.”

* Two optometrists in Texas write a web blog about optometry, and report that Amazon’s Kindle “holds a lot of promise” for people with serious eye conditions, including glaucoma, macular degeneration, and retinitis pigmentosa. Last year one of the eye doctors told Publisher’s Weekly that “Numerous people contact me about it — some are legally blind, some have a hard time seeing…” The Kindle can obviously convert any text into an instant large-print book, but its screen may be even better, because “contrast and brightness are very important for someone with low vision.” In addition, some arthritis or MS patients have trouble even holding a book — and the Kindle’s lighter size is making it easier for them to read.

* Finally, I’ll never forget the story of a concerned mother in North Carolina who wandered into Amazon’s Kindle forum and posted “I could cry…I am so happy.” Her 14-year-old daughter had struggled in school, and never read any books for enjoyment. But one day she picked up the family’s Kindle 2 — and surprised them all by suddenly starting to read. “After hours of reading I asked what the difference was between the regular book and the Kindle. She said she would get very overwhelmed by all the words and the size of the book which would make it difficult for her to stay focused. For whatever reason putting the font size up one notch has done the trick!”

Now somewhere in America, there’s a mother who’s happy because her child finally found a way to enjoy reading, and “She hasn’t put the Kindle down since!”

One very special Thanksgiving, I decided to write a funny ebook about turkeys. And this week, I’ve decided to share it with all of my readers for free. Just point your computer’s web browser to TinyURL.com/TurkeyBook , and Amazon will send it to your Kindle at no charge. And if you read it on your Kindle Fire (or on one of Amazon’s apps), you’ll even be able to see the illustrations in color. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s the backstory…

After years of blogging about new authors writing exciting new ebooks for the Kindle, I’d finally felt like I just had to try writing one too. So I dreamed up a wild story about four talking turkeys thare all awaiting the farmer’s axe on Thanksgiving Day — except one of them has a plan for escaping! To try to make it even more interesting, I included 12 different illustrations, and I even wrote the whole thing in rhyme.

“For Thanksgiving, try this game. Find the guilty turkey’s name…!”

But then a strange Thanksgiving miracle occurred. Amazon surprised me by publishing my book within just 12 hours from the time I’d submitted it to the Kindle Store. (I’d heard longer estimates of “24 to 48 hours.”) So I woke up the next morning to discover that somehow my turkeys had somehow already snuck onto Amazon’s list of the best-selling children’s ebooks about animals – and they’d stolen the #73 spot from a book about Curious George!

I still get a smile when I remember that Thanksgiving. Within another hour, The Turkey Mystery Rhyme had made it into the top six on Amazon’s list of children’s ebooks about birds, one notch above a book I’d first read back in first grade! I wrote to one of my friends that “I was almost paralyzed with excitement when I finally saw it for the first time on Amazon.” And it also made me pause for a minute during the holidays, and think a hopeful thought about the future.

“I love books, And when I read books, I go to a special place. And now I’m in that special place – I’m on the other side of the page, so to speak. And that makes me feel somehow like I’ve inherited some of the importance of the other books I usually read. (Now instead of looking at other people’s books at Amazon.com and their thumbnail images, it’s my book, and my thumbnail image…)

I’ve really been struck and blind-sided by how easy it was – how it all came together, and how everything I needed was already there…”

It was the day when self-publishing first started to feel real to me – with all the big things that that implied about the future of books. And with that in mind, I ended the e-mail by saying “I’ve tried to savor this day because it will always be my only first ebook.”

So visit this URL to check out my free rhyming Thanksgiving turkey mystery…

If you’re traveling for the holiday – or just have some extra time to relax — I’ve picked out a few Thanksgiving-related ebooks. With all the excitement around the upcoming holidays, I’m already feeling grateful… that I’ll finally get some time to read on my Kindle!

Here’s some of the best Thanksgiving ebooks — in different categories — that I found in Amazon’s Kindle Store.

Best-selling author Janet Evanovich wrote several funny mystery novels — but she actually began her career writing romance novels at the age of 45. One of her first books was “Thanksgiving,” written in 1988, describing how overworked Megan Murphy meets a good-looking doctor at historic Williamsburg, Virginia. (Megan’s enjoying a cup of hot cider and two sugar cookies from the Raleigh Tavern Bake Shop when she discovers the doctor’s giant pet rabbit is eating a hole through her skirt!)

According to the book’s description on Amazon, “she meant to give its careless owner a piece of her mind, but Dr. Patrick Hunter was too attractive to stay mad at for long,” and soon “the two are making Thanksgiving dinner for their families.” And 12 different Amazon’s reviewers gave it five-star reviews, including one who wrote that “If you’ve enjoyed Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, you’re going to get a kick out of her stories for the Loveswept Romance imprint…”

And best of all, you can also listen to the book. A
special audio version is now being distributed as a holiday CD!

Perdue Farms sells over $4.6 billion worth of poultry every year, and for eight years, Rick Rodgers was their media spokesman. He traveled the country giving classes, according to Amazon’s description of the book, and delivers “everything, absolutely everything, you would want to know about buying, thawing, prepping, and roasting a turkey.

“You needn’t look any further. There’s a long question-and-answer-style section that anticipates any questions you might have. Then it’s right on to everything from Perfect Roast Turkey with Best-Ever Gravy to Holiday Meatball Lasagna.” And in addition, there’s lots of recipes for stuffings, side dishes, appetizers, and even leftovers. 29 of the book’s 34 reviewers on Amazon gave it five stars, while the other five
awarded it four. It’s a classic — Amazon’s first review of the book was written in 1998 — but even today, it’s become one of Amazon’s best-selling holiday cooking books.

Who better to tell the story of Thanksgiving than the pilgrims who lived through it? (My favorite chapter was the one about the very non-Puritan antics of Thomas Morton…) William Bradford began writing his history of America’s most famous pilgrims back in 1630 (according to my anthology of American literature), and he continued chronicling their life up to 1647. But the invaluable manuscript was never published in his lifetime, and after Bradford’s death, his family passed it down through the generations.

The precious unpublished memoir traveled its own complicated journey, down through Boston’s Old South Church, and eventually even back to England. Finally it was published in 1856 — a full 200 years after it was written. And now today, thanks to the Kindle, we can take peek into the lives of the very pilgrims who first started celebrating Thanksgiving.

Just 12 weeks ago, a new Curious George book appeared, and this one has a special surprise. Yes, you may have read other children’s books about the playful and accident-prone monkey… But this one rhymes!

George wakes up in the morning.
Something smells quite nice.
He knows for sure he wants some —
A piece, a smidge, a slice.

He rushes to the kitchen
and there he sees the man —
with yellow hat an apron,
A turkey in the pan.

The turkey’s in the oven.
It takes some time to cook.
But every now and then
George can’t help but take a look….

I have a special holiday tradition. Each year on Halloween, I creep up on the Kindle Store, and take a peek at just how many zombie titles have crawled out into the marketplace. On Halloween night in 2011, there were just 2,269 Kindle ebooks with their word “zombie” in their title, but by 2012, that number had more than doubled to more than 4,874. And by the next year, it had nearly doubled again, to 8,052 zombie titles in 2013. The plague seemed to be slowing — in 2014, there were just 11,430 zombie ebooks in the Kindle Store. But this year? OMG!

Amazon’s Kindle store now has 15,659 zombie titles!

What’s fascinating is that over time, the number of zombie titles doubles, and doubles, and doubles again.

Year

Zombie Titles

2011

2,269

2012

4,874

2013

8,052

2014

11,430

2015

15,659

I’ve joked about the “rising zombie ebook invasion,” but the numbers really do show an unmistakeable trend. One Halloween, I noticed that one of the top 100 free ebooks in the Kindle Store was something called Super Zombie Juice Mega Bomb. But the real message may be that each Halloween, there’s more and more self-published authors who are writing zombie fiction. Even the Library of Congress only has 843 books with the word “zombie” in their title (up from just 523 in 2011 and 783 in 2014). Oh my god, run everybody — Amazon’s Kindle store now has 18 times as many zombies!!!

Even if they’re not real zombies, there’s something that’s almost viral about their popularity, suggesting that the Kindle store’s amateur authors are especially attracted to the zombie genre. Or are they? Sometimes it’s hard to tell the amateurs from the pros. Take a peek at the new titles, and you’ll be startled at just how many zombie ebooks there are. Don’t look now, but the living dead could be shambling up to your Kindle!

To be fair, “Texas Biker Zombies From Outer Space” is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, “intentionally designed to give the reader an interactive experience using the advantages over print that E-Books allow.” And Zombie Spaceship Wasteland was written by actor/comedian Patton Oswalt, using the horror movie monsters as a metaphor in a collection of essays “vividly evoking his zombie-like co-worker,” according to Booklist‘s review. Even 71-year-old literary author Joyce Carol Oates — twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — named her 1996 novel Zombie (P.S.) It’s about a serial killer — named Zombie — who keeps a diary as he pursues his victims.

I can understand why some of these books aren’t in the Library of Congress. (It’s probably more surprising that there’s any zombie books in the Library of Congress.) But to explore the popularity of stories about the shambling undead, I asked my friend Thomas Roche, a professional writer for more than 15 years, a professional writer who’s published his own novel about zombies. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten a quote back.

That last book is actually the newest book in R. L. Stine’s popular “Goosebumps” series of scary stories for younger readers (which have sold more than 350 million copies. I used its colorful cover at the top of this blog post. It’s easy to laugh at the titles, but they may have tapped into a storyline with some primal universal appeal. Some authors have enjoyed wild success by re-creating our darkest nightmares, and maybe that’s the ultimate irony.

It’s not that the zombies are attracted to our brains. It’s that our brains are attracted to zombies!

This trend probably all started when real-world bookstores started seeing big sales of a 2009 parody novel called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (crediting Jane Austen as a co-author). It rose to #3 on the New York Times best-seller list, according to Wikipedia, apparently spawning a new generation of even stranger zombie novels — and zombie ebooks.

In the two years since Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the concept has apparently festered its way into a full-fledged literary movement. I was surprised to see a book titled simply Zombies for Zombies — until I realized it was a parody of the “For Dummies” book (receiving thirteen 5-star reviews). There’s also The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Zombies, which strangely is not a parody, but an official title in the “Idiot’s Guide” series, which traces the origin of zombie stories with chapters about books, movies, and comic books. But just when it couldn’t get any creepier, I discovered that there’s even some zombie books that are actually about personal investing.

There’s something strangely inspiring about the sheer number of books that have ultimately been inspired about zombies. It’s nice to see this massive outpouring of new creativity, as people all around the globe start wondering what’s going to happen in their own imaginary zombie scenario. In fact, zombies are turning up in a surprising variety of different kinds of books. Though some authors even seem to think that maybe the lonely zombies just need a friend…

For Halloween, Amazon’s Kindle Store is offering a funny free comic book that looks at Batman when he was a child — as part of D.C. Comics special series, Li’l Gotham. It’s one of two stories in D.C.’s “Halloween Comic Fest 2013”, a 22-page holiday give-away that’s a nice way to celebrate. “Every once you in a while you just want to see the citizens of Gotham in a new light,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, “and that’s exactly what this book is all about.” And of course, they added that the artwork of the superheroes as trick-or-treating children “looked like fun to draw!”

And for Halloween night, you might also want to download the free audiobook version of Dracula by Bram Stoker. It’s read by a long list of narrators that includes Tim Curry — who played the lurking evil in the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s It, and of course also starred as the crazed libertine scientist in the The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Why is Amazon doing this? To show off their special feature they’re making available for audiobooks, “Whispersync for Voice”. Now if you’re reading the text of an ebook on any Kindle, you can instantly switch over to its audiobook version on your Kindle tablet (or in a Kindle app). And the audiobook’s narrator will continue reading right where you left off!

“Most people I know believe that if they only had more time to read, they would be more imaginative, more interesting, and more successful,” the founder of Audible.com once said in an excited press release. “Whispersync for Voice directly addresses that need. The ability to seamlessly switch back and forth between reading text on any Kindle and listening to the same title in audio on your smartphone [or on your Kindle Fire tablet] — and always pick up where you left off — means that the story can continue during those times of the day when you cannot look at a screen.” It’s a feature that’s exclusively available on the Kindle, with specially-enabled ebooks that are sold through Amazon’s Kindle Store.

And it seems like Halloween is the perfect time for a ghost story that’s delivered by a whisper!

I’ve found a lot of good information over the years about the Kindle at its page on Facebook, and also on the other Facebook pages from Amazon. But one Saturday morning, Amazon caught me off guard. They posted a Halloween riddle!

“Where does a ghost go on Saturday night?”

Amazon was asking its Facebook fans for the answer, but this game took a strange twist. “Guess the answer, or share your favorite pun-filled Halloween joke in a comment below,” Amazon urged their readers. And somehow this provoked an enormous flood of very creative responses. By the time Halloween rolled around, Amazon’s riddle had already racked up nearly 700 different responses from all around the country.

So where does a ghost go on Saturday night?

“To the BOO-vies?” suggested a college student in Georgia.

“To see his ghoul-friend!” suggested another student in Oregon.

“To the spooktacular,” suggested a woman in Arizona.

“Wine and Spirits store” suggested a student in Texas.

“To the spook-easy for a beverage,” said a man in California

“He goes Boo hopping, of course,” posted a woman in North Carolina, “for a bit of brew and spirits.”

I was a little frustrated that I couldn’t find Amazon’s official answer — but I was equally impressed there were so many possibilities! Where does a ghost go on Saturday night?
“The boo-ling alley,” suggested a student in Chicago.

“to the BOOlavard!!” posted one California college student.

“To the boooonies,” posted a woman in Florida.

“Anywhere where he can boo-gie,” suggested a man in New Jersey.

“Up to their boo-doir for some Resting In Peace?” suggested a woman in Arizona.

The best answer of all seemed to come from a Kindle owner. (“Ghosts sit and read boo-ks!”) Another user suggested ghosts go “To BOOks-a-million,” and one comment was apparently inspired by the new popularity of ebooks, posting “Wherever it is, it’s sure not the booooook store.” Author Sharif Khan even used the opportunity to promote his books on Facebook. “Ghosts like to visit my author page and click ‘like’ for some strange reason. It’s a mystery.” But my favorite response wasn’t a pun at all. (“Those ghosts. You can always tell when they’re planning something mischievous — they’re so transparent!”)

What would’ve been confined to a classroom was a virtual conversation across the entire country. It wasn’t even confined to America. Someone even posted an answer from a college in Bangalore, suggesting that on Saturday nights a ghost likes to “Hang out at his favorite haunt!!” And a man in England made a very clever pun, suggesting the ghosts who want to gamble go “To a wraith track!” Halloween had magically united everyone for a moment around a riddle of the random ghost. So one more time — where does a ghost go on Saturday night?

“Scare Dancing!” said a woman in Kentucky.

“He goes to Ho-boo-ken, NJ,” suggested a man in Pennsylvania.

A student at Ole Miss thought the ghosts would go to “A footboo game!”

One response even came from a mother.” My 10 year old says ‘roller scaring’!” And instead of karaoke, one woman suggested the ghosts would sing “Scareyoke!!”

“to the boondocks…”

“to the booseum, to see the moan-ets”

“Out with the ghouls?”

“To the bar and ghoul.”

“To the Ghostry store.”

“the boo-tique”

“To a boo-ery! Haha!”

“He goes BOOzing with his friends! :)”

“He goes bar haunting!”

“That way he can drink some boos…”

“Up to their boo-doir for some Resting In Peace?”

“to his Mummy’s?”

“to the booty parlor”

“Mali-BOO”

“he went to amusement park for (roller GHOSTER)”

“No where,” suggested one woman. “He’s got no body to go with.”

“He goes out to eat and orders Ghoulash. ”

“He works the graveyard shift”

“Out on the Ghosttown of course!”

“Deer Haunting”

“To bed because the sunday they have to get a booo_ stershot”

“She doesn’t go out…she needs her Boo-ty sleep!”

One Missouri student even contributed her own Halloween joke. “Why was the skeleton afraid to cross the road?” she asked. “Because he didn’t have any guts!” And even shorter one-line came from a woman in Arizona. “A Skeleton walked into a bar, and asked for a beer and a mop.” And a woman in Alabama offered this Halloween pun. “What do you call a witch who lives at the beach? A sand-witch!!”

Soon it wasn’t just Amazon’s ghost riddle any more, but a wave of everyone’s most-favorite Halloween joke.

“What do you call a hot dog with no center? A hollow weenie”

“What do Italian ghosts eat: spookghetti”

“What do vegetarian zombies eat? Graiiins, graiiins!”

“What happens when a ghost gets lost in the fog? He is mist.”

Maybe I’m just a big kid who loves the holidays — but it was nice to see so many people having some Halloween fun. It proves that Amazon’s been successful at building a small community of fans for themselves on another social network site, today I also noticed another way Amazon’s integrating themselves with Facebook. When you add something to your Amazon wish list, they can automatically post an “update” about it to your own Facebook page (or your Twitter feed — or even send an e-mail about your wished-for items to your friends). In the long run Amazon may get a few more sales.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so I love the fact that there’s Halloween games you can play on your Kindle. Even black and white “e-ink” Kindles can share in the fun, since many of these games were written before Amazon had even introduced their own line of color touchscreen tablets. It’s really fun to see game developers taking their established Kindle titles, and updating them with special Halloween editions.

I think the most interesting title ever for a Kindle game was Ghostboy and the Nameless Grave. It describes itself as “An Interactive Children’s Book for Kindle,” and I’m really impressed by its funny, elegant graphics. (The size of the game file is 4.6 megabytes). On his birthday, a little boy named Tristan is haunted by a little ghost girl, and the game’s description on Amazon promises that as its four-part story unfolds, “your child explores a town full of mysteries on the night before Halloween.”

But one Halloween, the best-selling game in the Kindle Store was the “Ultimate Halloween Quiz” — which actually became one of the top-40 best-selling items in the entire Kindle store! HandyX had already created seven other “interactive quiz” games, but this one promised questions about monsters, magic, and other October-appropriate topics. “Do you know Mary Shelley from Marilyn Manson, or Freddy from Jason…?” asked the game’s description at Amazon.com “Questions topics include horror movies, Halloween facts, scary novels, gruesome history, magical creatures, myths and legends. Halloween will never be the same!”

And there’s also a spooky version of the Sudoku-like logic puzzle, Futoshiki. “Futoshiki Halloween Edition takes an eerie twist as witches and zombies take over in a graveyard game board,” warns the game’s page in the Kindle store. There’s a dangerous-looking tree in the background of the game board, and the top of the screen even includes the silhouette of a witch. But somehow, the stark contrast on the Kindle’s black-and-white screen seems to fit the holiday perfectly.

But I think my favorite game is the special Halloween version of Blossom. This has always been one of my personal favorites, and it’s fun to see it getting a holiday makeover. In the original version, you’d rotate squares in a grid to connect a network of pipes to make some flowers blossom. But in this Halloween edition, those restful flowers have been replaced by jack-o-lanterns — and instead of a watering can, they’re connecting to a black witch’s cauldron!

And believe it or not, there’s now even a Halloween version of Mahjong Solitaire. “This game is so fun it’s scary!” reads its description in the Kindle Store, which promises to complement its 13 different layouts with two special Halloween tile sets. Their pictures include pumpkins, tombstones, and even something that looks like a smirking ghost. At $3.99, it’s one of the more expensive Kindle games — but if you like Mahjong Solitaire, this looks like a fun novelty.

And there’s one more new game in the Kindle Store with a special connection to Halloween. The makers of Slingo have just come up with “Poker of the Dead” — which combines the challenges of the classic “Texas Hold ‘Em” card game with…zombies! It’s a seven-day tournament (with 10 hands per day), with a dramatic backstory adding the complication of an onslaught by the living dead. But fortunately, according to the game’s description, your zombie opponents “have no brains, never fold, and will always call your bet.” The phrase “winner takes all” gets a whole new meaning, but if you defeat all these poker-playing zombies, you’ll live to fight another day.

Amazon’s newest free game isn’t quite as creepy — but they’ve taken a classic logic puzzle and given it a nice Kindle adaptation. “Grid Detective” recreates those story problems you may remember from puzzle magazines — where, for example, there’s four people receiving four kittens that are four different colors. So who got which kitten? The game offers a series of cryptic clues — but you can “crack the case” if you carefully track them all, and also make the right inferences. In the paper-and-pencil version, you’d have to draw your own grid to keep track of all your deductions, but Amazon’s made this game much simpler to play by creating their own detailed interface. It may not be the most mysterious game ever, but the whole “intrigue” theme seem appropriate for Halloween.

It just makes me smile that independent Kindle developers are dreaming up their own fun ways to celebrate Halloween with a Kindle!

Every October I start enjoying Halloween early — and not just that new chill in the air or the dead leaves blowing by. There’s a special mood in October, and it’s the perfect time to try reading some of the greatest scary stories ever written. Especially since now, they’re all available as free Kindle ebooks!

And Kindle Unlimited subscribers can even listen to their audiobook versions for free!

Ichabod Crane had heard the ghost stories about a headless horseman that rides through the night. On that very night, traveling home alone himself, under the light of a full moon he has his own legendary encounter with…ah, but there’s a twist at the end. And all these years after first hearing the story, I’ve discovered it’s just part of a much larger work. Washington Irving was the very first best-selling author in America, and he’d followed up his first sensational debut with a new collection of essays and stories — including some scary new folk tales that he’d actually made up himself! This collection also includes The Spectre Bridegroom, plus the famous story of Rip Van Winkle, who falls asleep before the American Revolution — and wakes up 20 years later, after the colonies have revolted and formed their own independent nation!

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a surprising number of America’s best-known horror stories, including Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum. His poetry is also very dark — Ulalume actually takes place around Halloween night — but his obsession with morbid themes also ultimately led him to become the author of the first detective story every written. It’s a murder mystery, of course — you’ll never guess who actually committed The Murders in the Rue Morgue — and Poe later even wrote two more stories using the same detective — The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter. But there’s also a surprisingly scary tale where a murderer is unmasked in the most shocking way possible — entitled “Thou Art the Man”. Twist endings were actually very popular in Poe’s time, and I’ve been surprised just how well some of his stories hold up!

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Percy Shelley died when he was 29 — though he was acclaimed as one of England’s greatest romantic poets. Some of this is through the efforts of his wife Mary, who promoted and edited his poems. And it’s been said that he may have had an infleunce himself on her intense novel, Frankenstein. Its idea came from a nightmare, and turned into her gothic story about about a promising young man who suffers the death of a loved one, and then embarks on a scientific experiment which he’ll later come to regret. It was first published anonymously in 1818, though it’s since gone on to become a classic monster story. (And Wikipedia has uncovered another strange historical twist. Mary WollstonecraftShelley was actually romantically interested in Washington Irving, the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow!)

Written just 126 years ago, Dracula is relatively modern for a classic horror story. Its author, Bram Stoker actually died in poverty just 14 years after publishing Dracula, according to Wikipedia, and his horror novel didn’t become popular until well into the next century. (It just goes to show how the invention of moving pictures changed everything — including the way we experienced our monster stories.) But interestingly, an early fan of the novel was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the Sherlock Holmes series. If you reach back 100 years, you’ll find lots of clever authors who appreciated both mystery and menace — and the joys of a good scary novel.

Right now Amazon’s running two special sales on Kindle ebooks. First there’s the “$3.99 or less” sale. (Every month Amazon selects nearly 300 ebooks, which they sell at a discount until the end of the month.) But now Amazon is also running a second sale where the ebooks are even cheaper! On its own separate web page, through September 20th, it’s offering “225 Kindle Books for $1.99 or Less!”

It’s one of the most famous science fiction stories of all time. (In the Kindle Store’s science fiction section, it’s still one of the top 50 best-selling books!) It’s a sprawling 324-page novel about humanity’s migration into space, including a famous confrontation between astronauts and a computer named HAL. But this edition also contains a secret second story about the director of the film, and the man who’d created the book.

30 years after he’d first published 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke penned a brand new introduction for its special anniversary edition. And then two weeks later, he received word that Stanley Kubrick had just died. “He was planning a special promotion of the movie in the year 2001,” Clarke remembers, now writing his second new introduction. “I am very sad that I am unable to share the occasion with him.”

Before he played James Bond, Roger Moore starred as “The Saint”, a suave crimefighter, in a TV series which ran for 7 years. But that series was an adaptation of a very popular series of books, which was written over a period of 35 years by a colorful author named Leslie Charteries. Now his books have finally found their way into Amazon’s Kindle store — and Amazon’s discounting two of them to just $1.99. “Enter the Saint” was his very first story about the tough swashbuckler who goes up against a mob of drug smugglers. And they’re also discounting another book with three more classic stories, in a 282-page collection titled The Saint vs. Scotland Yard.

This month Amazon’s discounting five different books from R. L. Stine’s popular “Goosebumps” series. There’s Werewolf of Fever Swamp and The 13th Warning, but also two newer entries in the 2012 relaunch of the franchise, which was titled “Goosebumps Most Wanted”. There’s Planet of the Lawn Gnomes and Zombie Halloween — and just in time for Halloween, Amazon’s also discounting a great tale about a ventriloquist’s dummy. One reviewer on Amazon described it as children’s horror literature, adding that Night of the Living Dummy “is quite possibly the greatest Goosebumps book ever written…”

That’s no small claim, since there’s over 60 different books in the series, and It’s hard to underestimate the huge popularity of the series. Over 350 million Goosebumps titles have been sold, and one newspaper even called their author the Stephen King of children’s books. So it’s especially nice that Amazon’s discounting one of the very first books in the series, which they’re lovingly describing as a “fan-favorite thriller and chiller”. (And it even includes new bonus material — about the scary ventriloquist dummy who comes to life…!)

It’s one of the classic western adventure novels — and the book itself has its own story, according to its description on Amazon. “When this powerful tale of adventure, danger, romance, and hope was first published — under the title Man of the Forest — it was dramatically different from what Zane Grey had originally written.” Its plot describes a desperate race against time for justice, and apparently its editors wanted to help speed things up. “Long passages had been removed, other passages written by someone else were inserted, and the hero’s name had been changed to Dale. Now, restored from Grey’s original manuscript, this wonderful novel can finally be enjoyed the way its author actually wrote it.”

The new book is called Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, and it normally retails for $24.95. But Amazon’s offering a special pre-order discount, selling it for just $15.99. It’s a beautiful collection of “large format” blueprints — 9″ x 13″ — offering the cartoonist’s wry, “detailed diagrams of interesting objects, along with explanations of what all the parts are and how they work,” according to a post on Randall’s XKCD blog. “The titles, labels, and descriptions are all written using only the thousand most common English words.

“Since this book explains things, I’ve called it Thing Explainer.”

Everything from datacenters to tectonic plates, and even all the controls in an airplane cockpit, will all get humorously simple descriptions. And in the blog post, Randall explains that he was inspired by his experience in trying to describe NASA’s Saturn V rocket (which carried 24 astronauts to the moon between 1968 and 1972). “Fire comes out here,” reads the bottom of the diagram, and Randall described the rocket’s control module as a “people box”. Another part of the diagram is labelled “part that flies around the other world and comes back home with the people in it and falls into the water…”

But best of all, Randall’s even describing this book in the same simple style that he’s using for its diagrams. (“I had a good time drawing Up Goer Five, so I decided to draw more pictures like that and make a book of them…”) It’d be a great, geeky gift — a 64-page masterpiece, released on November 24th, so it’ll be just in time for the big pre-December shopping season.

Amazon’s lowered the price on their Kindle to just $59! (It’s a special back-to-school offer, so it’s a “limited-time” price…) That’s more than 25% off its regular price, and it’s a great way to try Amazon’s light readers with the glare-free, black-and-white touchscreen

The discount applies to Amazon’s six-inch Kindle, but they’re also offering a discount on their “Kindle for Kids” bundle. Now just $79, Amazon’s kid-friendly Kindle ships in a colorful textured cover that protects it from damage. (And to make it even more suitable for children, this Kindle’s screensaver won’t display any advertising.) Amazon’s also offering an extended two-year warranty, so you won’t have to worry about damage to the device, and it even awards “achievement badges” for the ebooks your child is reading.

“Lighter than a paperback, holds thousands of books,” Amazon teases at the top of a recent promotional e-mail, which is touting the discount on both devices. I’m tempted to buy the $59 Kindle just to try a more recent version of the Kindle — and it weighs just 6.7 ounces! It’s got a 4-week battery life, according to Amazon’s specs, though it’s got a lower “pixel density” than the Kindle Paperwhite or the Kindle Voyage. But the Paperwhite now costs twice as much, and the Voyage is more than three times as expensive.

It’s the cheapest Kindle I’ve ever seen — and yes, it would make an awesome back-to-school gift!

I learned a lot about books — more than I’d meant to — while preparing a blog post last month. It’s a personal story, full of real highs and some real frustrations, and a few moments of honest-to-god history. And it all ends up with a picture of a little boy waving at a train…

I was thrilled when my book club finally agreed to read one of my all-time favorite novels. But could I still find a hardcover version of the original 1943 novel? By the end of that evening, I’d visited six different bookstores, and only one of them had a copy on their shelves. But even more startling, I discovered that two of my favorite bookstores had gone out of business!

ClosedNothing by the Author…Only one obscure book by the author…Out of business
Had the book!Out of business

In the end, it was easier to just purchase the book on Amazon — especially since I was able to locate both editions. (The revised 1966 Dell paperback, and the original Harcourt Brace and Co. hardcover from 1943). And I was delighted that I’d even found a version with the original dust jacket… William Saroyan had won a Pulitzer Prize just three years before he wrote The Human Comedy. So it felt tragic that it was so difficult to find a bookstore that would sell me a copy — and very important that I pursue this to wherever it led…

I’d live with these books for the next month, revisiting its story of small-town America — and discovering all the startling differences between the original and revised editions. And the very first difference I discovered was pretty substantial — every chapter’s title had been changed. “All the World Will Be Jealous of Me” had become simply “At Home”, and “You Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine” had become “Mrs. Sandoval.” Soon I was stunned to discover that that pattern was repeating for every single chapter, which suggested more rich details that might be slipping away…

A Song For Mr. Grogan

Mr. Grogan

If a Message Comes

Mrs. Macauley

Be Present at Our Table, Lord

Bess and Mary

Rabbits Around Here Somewhere

The Veteran

The Two-Twenty Low Hurdle Race

Miss Hicks

The Trap, My God, the Trap!

Big Chris

I’ll Take You Home Again

Going Home

Mr. Grogan on the War

The Telegram

To Mother, with Love

Alan

It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own

After the Movie

A Better World, a Better People

Valley Champion for Kids

Let There Be Light

The Holdup Man

Death, Don’t Go To Ithaca

The Nightmare

Be Happy! Be Happy!

Mr. Ara

There Will Always Be Pain in Things

Mrs. Macauley

All The Wonderful Mistakes

Lionel

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

On the Train

A Letter from Marcus to His Brother Homer

Marcus

Here is a Kiss

At the Church

The Trees and the Vines

Spangler

Ithaca, My Ithaca!

Ithaca

Love Is Immortal, Hate Dies Every Minute

The Horseshoe Pitchers

The End and the Beginning

The House

Wait a minute — there’s two different chapters that are both named “Mrs. Macauley.” (See what happens when you name chapters after their primary character?) It was fun exploring the book for its changes, both big and small, and the second difference I discovered was just one word in the first chapter. But it still seemed like it was a pretty important change…

The little boy turned slowly and started for home. As he moved, he still listened to the passing of the train…and the joyous words: “Going home, boy — going back where I belong!” He stopped to think of all this, loitering beside a china-ball tree and kicking at the yellow, smelly, fallen fruit of it. After a moment he smiled the smile of the Macauley people — the gentle, wise, secret smile which said Yes to all things.

In the revised edition, “Yes” was changed to “Hello”.

I even discovered a new typo that was introduced in the revised edition. (Unless “indredible” is a word.) But more importantly, in chapter three, they’ve trimmed the conversation where the manager of the telegraph office asks his 14-year-old messenger about what future he’s mapped out for himself. “Well… I don’t know for sure, but I guess I’d like to be somebody some day. Maybe a composer or somebody like that — some day.”

“That’s fine,” Spangler said, “and this is the place to start. Music all around you — real music — straight from the world — straight from the hearts of people. Hear those telegraph keys? Beautiful music.”

“Yes sir,” Homer said.

In the revised edition, the conversation goes like this.

“Well… I don’t know for sure, but I guess I’d like to be somebody some day.”

“You will be,” Spangler said.

I wondered if the author was trying to shorten the book — to make it more like a paperback, for mass-market consumption. (The sentence “You know where Chatterton’s bakery is?” was changed to “Know where Chatterton’s bakery is?”) It’s like watching deleted scenes from a movie. Sometimes you sense that it made the movie shorter, but at the same time it’s also eliminated some context.

An entire chunk of dialogue was cut from the end of the scene at the telegraph office.

“Mr. Grogan went on, his mouth full of cocoanut cream. ‘Do you feel this world is going to be a better place after the War?’

Homer thought for a moment and then said, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you like cocoanut cream?’ Mr. Grogan said.

‘Yes, sir,’ Homer said.

Are these significant changes? If a story’s strength lies in its poignancy, then how do you measure the value of dialogue? Here’s some more sentences that were edited out of chapter 4, when the smallest boy wanders into a conversation with his mother and older sister, asking about the brother who’s gone away to war.

“Where’s Marcus?”

Mrs. Macauley looked at he boy.

“You must try to understand,” she began to say, then stopped.

Ulysses tried to understand but didn’t know just what was to be understood.

“Understand what?” he said.

“Marcus,” Mrs. Macauley said, “has gone away from Ithaca.”

“Why?” Ulysses said.

“Marcus is in the Army,” Mrs. Macauley said.

In the revised edition, that scene was shortened to simply two sentences.

Tuesday a newly-discovered Dr. Seuss book was finally published — and within hours it had become an Amazon best-seller! “Told in Dr. Seuss’s signature rhyming style, this is a must-have for Seuss fans and book collectors,” according to the book’s description at Amazon, “and a perfect choice for the holidays, birthdays, and happy occasions of all kinds.”

The book is called What Pet Should I Get?, and it features the same two children from Red Fish, Blue Fish. Their trip to a pet store offered Dr. Seuss a perfect opportunity to draw more wild illustrations of animals — including a monkey, a rabbit, and an imaginary creature called a yent. Reviewers on Amazon are applauding the book for its Seuss-ian flavor, saying it’s style and tone feel just like earlier Seuss works. “The book rhymes, of course, and the drawings are bright and colorful…” wrote a retired Navy CPO in Vermont. “Wonderful rhymes and delightful creatures that are sure to entertain the little ones in your family.”

I think it’s funny that Dr. Seuss has now overtaken Harper Lee on the best-seller list at Amazon. (She released a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird just two weeks ago, and it’s currently Amazon’s #3 best-selling book.) Although one Amazon reviewer reported that they’d rush to Walmart to purchase their copy, because “Dr. Seuss books are meant to be held and read.”

But the strangest thing is the audiobook version is read by Rainn Wilson. He’s the actor who played Dwight on The Office — the long-running sitcom where he played the strange assistant to the regional manager of a Scranton paper company. Maybe he’s the perfect choice, with his earnest commitment to the importance of choosing the right animal as a pet. (The audiobook and the print edition were both released Tuesday, and both are available through Amazon.

Several reviewers have pointed out that the book has a fun message about choice and decisions and the children confront the classic childhood dilemma. (“Which pet should we get?” is repeated excitedly throughout the book, and Dr. Seuss is more than happy to illustrate all the many options available to the children.) But there’s an interesting “Editor’s Note” tucked away at the end of the book, telling the story about how they recovered this lost Dr. Seuss book.

There’s some wonderful new surprises hidden in the “Young Adult” category of Amazon’s Kindle Store. Every month Amazon selects over 100 ebooks for their special “$3.99 or less” sale. There’s now a whole section of discounted “Young Adult” books, and they’ve discounted some especially intriguing titles!

This heart-tugging novel won the National Book Award in 2000 for its stunning story about a young girl and her remarkable personal journey. “Like many girls her age in India, thirteen-year-old Koly is getting married,” reads the book’s description at Amazon. But somehow fate charts a different course, and the young girl ultimately must “shed her name and her future and join the hopeless hordes who chant for food.” The story is 234 pages, but it leads to an exhiliarating conclusion. “[C]ast out in a current of time-worn tradition, this rare young woman sets out to forge her own exceptional future. And a life, like a beautiful tapestry, comes together for Koly– one stitch at a time…”

Malcom is a rat, a pet at a school with a “secret society” of classroom pets who work together to keep the childrens safe. Suddenly their leader — an iguana — is kidnapped, and Malcolm must prove that he’s innocent of the crime. “This engaging middle-grade novel will have readers rooting for Malcolm,” reads the book’s review at Amazon, “as they try to solve the mystery alongside him.” And best of all, it’s been illustrated by Brian Lies, the creator of one of my favorite children’s picture books, —Bats at the Beach !

“Student council president Howard Mergler is actually a sinister bug-monster in disguise — and he’s summoning swarms of roaches, wasps, fleas, and head lice into the corridors of Lovecraft Middle School!” Eww — it’s another creepy day at Lovecraft Middle School, loving described in a series of comic horror novels aimed at young adults. It looks like he’s having fun — the fourth book in his series is called”Substitute Creature” — and the first three books have all been discounted to just $3.03.

“Teacher’s Pest is a well-written book that provides young readers with a little spooky fun,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, “while also offering them some reassurance that the challenges of middle school are not insurmountable.”

“Heads will roll!” jokes this book’s description at Amazon.com. (“…a series of gruesome murders are taking place around the city, putting everyone on edge. And as she tours the sights, Colette keeps seeing a strange vision: a pale woman in a ball gown and powdered wig, who looks like Marie Antoinette…”) This book is recommended for “Grades 7 and Up” , so it’s probably a mistake that it ended up in Amazon’s “Children’s Book” section. It’s a 309-page thriller in which the descendents of French Revolutionaries are apparently being targeted for revenge!

Remember, for a shortcut to all of Amazon’s discounted ebooks,
point your browser to

It’s a legend. The Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist was fired from MGM’s film The Human Comedy in 1943. So he adapted his screenplay into a novel, and released it when the film premiered. Then the film was ultimately nominated for five Oscars (including “Best Picture”) and won the “Best Story” Oscar for its fired writer himself, William Saroyan. Later, Louis B. Mayer would recall this as his all-time favorite film…

But Amazon tipped me off to another shocking chapter in the story about the story. More than 20 years later, in 1966, William Saroyan revised his novel yet again — and it was released as a shorter Dell paperback. “The Human Comedy is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, “so when I opened this paperback version, I was devastated to realize that the unthinkable had occurred– the text had been altered!” 53 different Amazon customers nodded their virtual agreement to the criticism — or at least, marked the review as helpful. “The ending that I had so cherished in an old hardback version had been hastily re-written, going so far as to conclude with a completely different final sentence.”

This review led me to my own comparison of the two editions — and I’ve created a table documenting just how different the two editions are. Entire passages have been deleted, about the music of the world, and about how nothing good ever really ends. “I do not know how a publisher could in good conscience alter the work of such an extraordinarily gifted writer…” the Amazon reviewer complained. “The Human Comedy is an incredibly moving book and, unfortunately, this paperback edition does not do it justice.”

The hardback edition was 291 pages long, the paperback just 192. But now a community of readers — the book’s invisible fans — were inspiring me. I spent a few weekends immersing myself in both books, savoring William Saroyan’s stirring portrayal of small-town America — and of life itself. (I’m not the only fan of this novel. Tom Hanks will be appearing in a new movie of the book coming out in December, which will also star Meg Ryan and Sam Shepherd…)

There were some more startling secrets in other Amazon reviews. One schoolteacher had lived near the real California town on which Saroyan based the book. After 42 years of teaching, she’d retired, and then in 1999 visited Amazon to share her own insights. The telegraph office described in the novel — as well as the winery — were both real-life businesses which she’d had her students locate on a map! And she announced that she’d be collaborating with Saroyan’s grand-niece on a college course sharing memories about the famous novelist.

Another Amazon reviewer wrote that she’d read the book three times, each at a different point in her life, and each time finding that it had a different flavor. (“This book is like wine; it becomes vintage as you get older…”) But she also shared another fascinating piece of trivia. Saroyan lost his father at an early age, and his uncle — who became a father figure to him — “was taken to war and that was the last he saw of him.” Throughout his novel, the young children in the family grapple with the absence of their own father. “Saroyan dedicated the story to his mother. This is a key element of the story…”

I have my own piece of trivia to share. The same year that the book was published, William Saroyan was married — and he seems to have named one of the characters after his wife. Throughout the novel, a telegram boy worries about his older brother Marcus, who is serving in World War II. In 1943, William Saroyan married a woman named Carol Marcus.

It’s fun to participate in this giant conversation about a cherished novel. “I admit I cried at the end of it,” wrote one reviewer. And another wrote enthusiastically that this was truly “The Great American Novel.” (“Read it or suffer a less fulfilling life than you could have had…”)

I love comics — especially online comics — so I’m a big fan of Hark! A Vagrant. And last week it’s creator just released her first children’s picture book. It’s fun to see her adapting her simple-yet-imaginative style to a more ambitious project. And best of all, this cutting-edge picture book is available as a Kindle ebook!

I’ve always liked Kate Beaton’s “peremptory” storytelling, where any premise, historical or otherwise, has to dance along to the cartoonist’s newest whims. She brings the same casual insistence to this story, plaguing her princess with a tiny pony in a land that worships warriors. There’s something exhilarating about the scope of this story, which is either an iconic tale of female empowerment or a parody of our jock-obsessed world. And it’s really nice to see Kate Beaton tackling some full-page drawings, populated with lots of minor characters from around her comical medieval town.

Plus, the drawings look great on the screen of my Kindle. There’s a funny drawing of the princess in her room, which looks like any other child’s room, except it belongs to a medieval warrior. (There’s toys scattered across the floor and a shelf of books over the bed, as the princess lies on her back and idly tosses a baseball into the air — and the horse begins eating her curtains!) And the book’s climax takes place on a big battle field — marked by a “Welcome warriors!” sign. It’s a green, grassy field where warriors are stretching out in their workout clothes, hydrating from a water bottle, or talking to a couch with a clipboard…

The battle itself is a glorious sprawl of details, with crazy colorful people doing funny, silly things. It reminded me a little of those “Fractured Fairy Tale” parodies that they used to include in Bullwinkle’s old Saturday morning cartoon. But don’t worry, no one gets hurt in the battle — even though Otto the Awful charges straight for the princess!There’s people jumping, shouting, and smacking each other with sticks. (Or are those soft plastic tubes, so that nobody gets hurt?)

The whole scene takes two pages — with Prince Pinecone tucked off to the side with her little bug-eyed horse. The busy illustration definitely creates a sense of action, and Beaton even draws someone in the audience wearing a foam finger reading “#1”. (And the man next to him is holding a box of popcorn, and wearing a baseball cap…) When Otto finally charges the princes, Beaton writes that he’s “the meanest warrior of all”! The crowd gasps, and Princess Pinecone grabs for her spitballs…

But instead of charging, Otto suddenly stops to admire the adorable pony — and soon everyone is doing the same thing. “Awww, what a cute little pony!” Otto says, ticking the small animal under its chin. ” Who would want to hurt a roly-poly pony like you?” I have to admit that this turn-around, while funny, was also a little disappointing. “We warriors don’t often get to show our cuddly sides,” Otto reveals, and the princess has found her new calling.

Or at least, someplace where she can unload all those unwanted cozy sweaters that people kept giving her for her birthday! Now they give her a trophy that proclaims her “most valuable warrior.” War is usually pretty stupid, after all — and what’s more important than getting in touch with your feelings? Like a true work of art, it makes you think — wouldn’t this ultimately have been a better outcome for every battle in the Middle Ages?

It’s always fun to be surprised by the brash plot twists of this gentle Canadian cartoonist. I’d especially liked how Beaton drew the princess in a sweater labeled “Special Girl” (when what the princess really wanted were warrior gifts). That felt iconic to me, like it was making fun of the way young girls are sometimes treated as precious (and passive) princesses, instead of letting them play hard with the little boys.

But by the end of the story, everyone is wearing the princess’s cozy sweaters. And they’ve declared her the most valuable warrior of all — because her little pony is so cute!

Each summer I look forward to it: that moment on the fourth of July when I start reading ebooks by some of America’s greatest authors. It’s a way to try to appreciate the true meaning of our “Independence Day” holiday. And some of my all-time favorite American authors now have ebooks available in the Kindle Store — for free!

But I also pause to remember one very special 4th of July…

There’s always a parade down the streets of our town, and one year a friend invited me to ride on his float. So instead of watching the 4th of July parade, I was in the 4th of July parade! What a rush — the whole town, it seemed, was smiling and waving at us as we rode by, and everywhere on that hot afternoon, you saw red, white, and blue. I was feeling a strange euphoria when I finally got home. And that’s when I started reading on my Kindle.

There’s a book called the U.S. A. Trilogy that reminded me of my favorite author, John Dos Passos. He used a stream-of-consciousness technique to mix together newspaper headlines and lyrics of popular songs with longer descriptions of his characters and the challenges they faced in every day life. The book flashes to the lives of his characters before (and after) World War I, and now finally it’s become available as a Kindle ebook. And that afternoon I discovered Amazon’s Kindle Store also has free editions for each of the author’s first four novels!

“The Early Works of John Dos Passos” is available in the Kindle Store as a 514-page collection of those four novels for just $1.99. Amazon named the collection one of their Best Books of 2013 (So Far), and it’s from a publisher called Halcyon Classics. But there’s also a free edition available for each one of the four books in the collection! Dos Passos was inspired partly by his own experiences in World War I, and he writes vivid and intimate stories for the characters in all four of his early novels.

For $1.99, you can even purchase the professionally-narrated audiobook version for each of these ebooks (except A Pushcart to the Curb.) But because of the Kindle, I was also able to enjoy reading reviews of these American classics from new readers who’d recently discovered them on Amazon.com. One reviewer argued that Three Soldiers may be set during the war, but it’s more about one man’s struggle to retain his individuality. (Wikipedia points out that at least one of the soldiers has a military career which is virtually identical to that of John Dos Passos!) And another reader said these four earlier novels really capture the author’s tremendous growth. “It was refreshing to see through this collection how he came to eventually writing the great American classic USA Trilogy and developed a modern style, more complex and textured than any of the other members of the lost generation with the possible exception of James Joyce….”

Of course, I read some other interesting books as part of my all-American afternoon. I flipped through a wonderful postcard-sized print book called Traveling Route 66, which features photographs of highway scenes you might see in the 1950s, from neon signs to various roadside attractions. That book quoted a poem by Walt Whitman called “Song of the Open Road”, which led me to look a free online copy of the complete poem on my Kindle. The poem is also available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents.

But I couldn’t let the day end without reading at least a few lines of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. What’s forgotten is that poem is part of a larger work – a kind of American version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where six different characters each take a turn reciting a poem on a topic that’s dear to their heart. (It’s also available as a free Kindle ebook.)Tales of a Wayside Inn was written in 1862, during the American Civil War, when poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was struggling with his wife’s death and the injuries of his son, who was serving in the Union army. In this longer poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” is actually referred to as “The Landlord’s Tale”, and after its conclusion, there’s a few more poignant lines that always remind me that holidays are often just a way of remembering, in your own way, all of those who came before you.

The Landlord ended thus his tale,
Then rising took down from its nail
The sword that hung there, dim with dust,
And cleaving to its sheath with rust,

Just seven months before the famous document was signed, author Thomas Jefferson had written “there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America…”

Wikipedia’s page walks you through all the events that led up to July 4, 1776 — and also provides the complete text of the famous document, along with some good historical context. As the country celebrates the day it declared its independence, I like taking a moment to read some good history – and my Kindle really makes it easy. I think it’s funny that Amazon customers are now leaving reviews of the Declaration of Independence, which currently has a rating of 4.7 stars out of 5. (“As a graduate student in philosophy and history, I heartily recommend this timeless classic to anyone who is interested in political philosophy, and history…”) In comparison, the free version of the Constitution received only four and a half stars. (“Accurate reproduction and free, but does not include any amendments…”)

And because of the Kindle, you don’t have to content yourself with Wikipedia for your American history fix. When he was 65 years old, another American patriot — Benjamin Franklin — began writing a fascinating autobiography of his own life, and it’s available in the Kindle Store as a free ebook!

In fact, more than 200 years later, it’s now become one of Amazon’s best-selling e-books. Franklin had continued working on his biography over the last 20 years of his life, until his death at age 84 in 1790 — noting wryly that “the Affairs of the Revolution occasion’d the Interruption…” It’s especially poignant that Benjamin Franklin began writing it in 1770 as a loving letter to his son. But soon Franklin’s son had sided with the British druing the American Revolution, and Wikipedia notes that they were hopelessly estranged by the time Franklin sat down to write part two in 1784. Now he was 78, and laying down his thoughts in the year 1784 about his ideas for…a public library. And in part three — written in 1788 at the age of 82 — Franklin also remembered inventing his famous Franklin stove…and then declining to patent the invention because he’d created it for “the good of the people.”

It’s a great way to answer the question: What kind of men launched the American Revolution? And it just goes to show you that with a little research, the Kindle can give you an almost magical glimpse into the realities of our past… But there’s also a fascinating story about how the Declaration of Independence first came to be online. 40 years ago, a student at the University of Illinois launched a mission to make the great works of literature available for free to the general public. Remembering the man who’d revolutionized the world of reading by inventing the first mechanical printing press, he named his collection “Project Gutenberg”. By 2009, they’d created over 30,000 free e-texts, according to Wikipedia. And it’s a cause that’s near and dear to the hearts of a lot of geeks online.

But here’s my favorite part of the story. He’d launched this lifelong campaign back in 1971, anticipating all the great literature that he’d be sharing with the entire world, and even making available for new generations to come. So on that first day, 40 years ago, which great work of literature did he choose as the very first one?

Marvel’s The Avengers has become one of this summer’s biggest movie blockbusters. And to celebrate, Amazon’s discounting the Kindle edition of six big graphic novels starring The Avengers — and there’s also several free Avengers comic books in Amazon’s Kindle Store! And anticipating the next upcoming Marvel blockbuster, they’re also discounting the Kindle edition of a Marvel graphic novel about Ant-Man (called “Small World”).

Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, plus She-Hulk and The Wasp, greet a young superhero named Nova. But I like the theme of this free comic book — which is heroism, and the personal choices that each individual superhero has to make. It’s a special 14-page introduction to some of Marvel’s most popular characters. And it’s great to see them all in high-definition color in the Kindle app on my tablet!

Captain America is one of my favorite Avengers — and this 2011 comic tells the “origin story” of the man who wears the red, white and blue. It was considered “the official prequel” for Marvel’s 2011 summer blockbuster (the Captain America movie). And four years later, it’s still Amazon’s #1 most popular graphic novel in their “Media Tie-In” section.

This free comic book was the official prelude to Marvel’s The Avengers movie back in 2011. “In a world full of green monsters, gods, and men in iron suits…” asks the book’s description at Amazon, “How will S.H.I.E.L.D. maintain the status quo?” it’s a fun 13-page glimpse into the life of Nick Fury — Samuel L. Jackson’s character in The Avengers movie, who makes the decisions about how to confront the next crazy alien invasion. And if you enjoy the comic, there’s 7 more issues that continue its story!

Strangely, there are two discounted Marvel graphic novels that are both named Avengers, Volume 1. One features the spectacular 2011 relaunch of the team for Marvel’s “Heroic Age” (written by long-time Avengers writer Brian Michael Bendis). Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man join Wolverine and Spider-Man for a massive superhero showdown with some time-traveling supervillains, in a story that ends with a great science fiction twist. And the other graphic novel represents a passing-of-the-torch, as Jonathan Hickman took over the series, sending the Avengers into a high-stakes war that leads them to Mars, the Savage Land, and ultimately to the very origins of planet earth!

This massive 136-page collection collects six issues of the “Thor: God of Thunder” series from 2013, and it’s drawing rave reviews from readers on Amazon. “This is an incredible series with larger than life storytelling brought to life with epic art,” wrote one reviewer, calling the collection “A great jumping on point for new Thor fans, like myself.” In a powerful story that spans thousands of years, Thor discovers a forgotten cave “that echoes with the cries of tortured gods,” according to the book’s description at Amazon. And far off in the future, he must later confront “the berserker legions…as the last god-king of a ruined Asgard!”

I wrote about this one earlier this month. It’s a mammoth collection of original Avengers comic books to commemorate Marvel’s release of their new blockbuster, Avengers: Age of Ultron. This 432-page tome collects 11 classic issues of The Avengers — plus two more of the big “Avengers Annual” issues, as well as Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16, Fantastic Four #256, and Doctor Strange #60. See The Scarlet Witch and The Vision, as well as memorable confronations between Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man — arguing whether Tony Stark has finally taken things too far. And this book even includes a rare story where Hawkeye, Black Widow, and three of their superhero teammates make an appearance on David Letterman’s late-night talk show!

This 160-page graphic novel collects six issues of “The New Avengers” during their spectacular “Breakout” event back in 2004. The epic story followed the aftermath of a jailbreak of massive proportions, with supervillians from the Marvel universe suddenly running around on the loose. Iron Man and Captain America team up with Wolverine, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and Luke Cage, and the chase leads them to the Savage Land. One reviewer on Amazon described it as “The Start of Something Great,” and it’s always fun to see a team of Marvel superheroes back in action.

This 168-page graphic novel collects six issues of Marvel’s “Mighty Avengers” comic. Iron Man (Tony Stark) attempts to rebuild the team, and it’s nice to see Natasha Romanoff (the Black Widow) back in the line-up. They join with Ms. Marvel, The Wasp, The Sentry, and Wonder Man, but soon they’re confronting the evil super-robot Ultron. “A group this powerful should be ready for just about anything,” reads the book’s description at Amazon, “except, perhaps, the return of a genocidal killing machine…”

Many men have worn the tiny, size-shifting suit of Ant-Man — and two of them square off in this entertaining graphic novel. “Eric O’Grady once stole the Ant-Man suit from Hank Pym,” explains the book’s description at Amazon. “But now, Eric is the only one who knows about a secret AIM plot to steal Pym’s greatest invention!” So the old Ant-Man and the new Ant-Man team up for an undercover mission that — aw, you had me at “Ant-Man.” I’m a fan, and I loved this graphic novel.